Celebrate the NBA Finals with these Basketball Titles!

It’s NBA Finals time, and the San Antonio Spurs currently have a 2-1 edge over the Miami Heat, but there are still at least two more games to be played. We can’t predict the winning team, but we can recommend a couple of our basketball-related titles!

Moonfixer: The Basketball Journey of Earl Lloyd by Earl Lloyd and Sean Kirst provides a first-person account of Earl Lloyd, the first African American to play in a NBA game. Nicknamed “Moonfixer” in college, Lloyd led West Virginia State to two CIAA Conference and Tournament Championships and was named All-American twice. One of three African Americans to enter the NBA at that time, Lloyd played for the Washington Capitals, Syracuse Nationals, and Detroit Pistons before he retired in 1961. Throughout his career, he quietly endured the overwhelming slights and exclusions that went with being black in America. Yet he has also lived to see basketball—a demonstration of art, power, and pride—become the black national pastime and to witness the inauguration of Barack Obama. In a series of extraordinary conversations with Sean Kirst, Lloyd reveals his fierce determination to succeed, his frustration with the plight of many young black men, and his sincere desire for the nation to achieve true equality among its citizens.

Also keep an eye out for Dolph Schayes and the Rise of Professional Basketball by Dolph Grundman, which will come out this fall! Grundman presents readers with a portrait, the first of its kind, of Dolph Schayes—the star of the Syracuse Nationals basketball team during the 1950s and 1960s. Schayes may not have one of the most recognizable names in basketball history, but his accomplishments are staggering. He was named one of the fifty greatest players of all time by the NBA, and he held six NBA records, including one for career scoring, at his retirement. Grundman chronicles Schayes’s life from his early days as the child of Jewish Romanian immigrants, through his illustrious basketball career, first at New York University, then as part of the Syracuse Nationals. In writing about Schayes’s career, Grundman also reflects on many of the revolutionary changes that were happening in the professional basketball world, changes that affected not only Schayes and his contemporaries but also the essence of the sport.